A Cache Timing Attack on AES in Virtualization Environments

The authors show in this paper that the isolation characteristic of system virtualization can be bypassed by the use of a cache timing at-tack. Using Bernstein's correlation in this attack, an adversary is able to extract sensitive keying material from an isolated trusted execution domain. They demonstrate this cache timing attack on an embedded ARM- based platform running an L4 microkernel as virtualization layer. They also show that an attacker who gained access to the untrusted domain can extract the key of an AES-based authentication protocol used for a financial transaction.